


People Like You

by spiderlight



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 13:24:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2734178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderlight/pseuds/spiderlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cadash gently pursues Blackwall.</p><p>Vague spoilers, mainly for Blackwall's personal quest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	People Like You

**Author's Note:**

> ok so  
> 1) I have not yet romanced Blackwall so any discrepancies/similarities are based on the fact that I'm going on hearsay and my own imagination  
> 2) generally I try to keep the player character kind of vague because I know everybody likes to imagine their own character, but I gave my Cadash a little beard (insomuch as 5 o'clock shadow can be called a beard) and I LOVE IT and I wanted to write about it a little bit

She's more agile than he expected, thinks Blackwall, though he is not sure what his basis of comparison is—he's not known many dwarves personally. He supposes his assumption is based on their stockiness, their shorter limbs, though he also supposes he is generalizing and probably shouldn't. She _is_ stocky, though, and broad; her arms and legs are visibly well-muscled under her leathers. She favors daggers, but he has seen her pick up a practice sword to spar with the qunari, and dance circles around him. Perhaps the qunari underestimated her, as well.

He catches himself admiring her form sometimes, and always feels dirty for it.

It is raining on the Storm Coast, as always, and he watches nervously as she nimbly scales a cliff to reach a cave in the face of it. The stone is slippery, and she had said, “I don't want to have to worry about one of you falling and killing yourselves, so stay put.”

She returns within minutes, ichor splattered on her armor, her pack stuffed with whatever it is she found inside. She climbs back down, not gracefully, exactly, but maybe expertly. Despite her lightness of foot, there is little graceful about her.

“The cave opens on the other side of this mountain,” she says. “Looked like some old camps further on, might be the wardens we're looking for.”

“Aye,” says Blackwall, to fill the silence.

 

He says the world is at her feet, and she says that's where she would like him, her head tilted so she can look at him with one eye. She never cranes her neck to speak to anyone taller than her, and her sideways appraisals give the impression that she is always calculating. She makes him nervous.

 

“Is it the beard?” she asks him one evening. She should be tired, he thinks, just returned from a week in Crestwood. But she is here, outside his small hut, in the snow, speaking to him.

“Pardon, my lady?” he replies.

“My beard,” she says. “I know you humans get weird about that sort of thing, your women not having them, and all. Or at least not that I'm aware of.”

He is surprised by her question. True, it was something of a curiosity at first. A woman with rough stubble on her jaw, it was new, different. “Why would I have a problem with it?” he asks.

She gives him that sideways glance, the one that makes him feel like she knows everything he's hiding, and pulls herself up to sit on to the low stone wall nearby.

“I've done everything short of officially proposition you, and you give me nothing. It's the beard, isn't it?”

She doesn't seem tremendously put out by her conclusion, still smiling wryly as his face heats.

“It's not the beard,” he says clumsily.

Truth is, the more he thinks of it, the more he imagines the way it might feel on his thighs.

He sighs and searches for the words. “There's a war on,” he says. “It's not the right time.”

Her eyes narrow and she rubs a hand along her jaw. “Okay,” she says simply, and leaves.

 

He is the one to pull her out of the snow when she crests the hill into their makeshift camp in the mountains. Her pallor is grey and there is ice in her eyelashes, and she is very, very cold. He is the one to sit with her while the important members of the Inquisition argue about how to proceed. Solas had warmed her up, done what he could, and Mother Giselle had held her hands and prayed. Blackwall sits next to her cot and waits.

 

When he says, “You're too good for me,” she laughs.

She says, “You forget who I am.”

 

She tells him, one evening over the fire and after they've had a few bottles of wine between them, that she trusts him over anyone else in the Inquisition. “You have bad things in your past,” she says, and he doesn't tell her she's wrong.

She says, “You don't look at me like I'm the Herald of Andraste.”

 

He sees her wink at servants and flirt with the Seeker and fluster the recruits. She always comes back to him. The Iron Bull propositions her in the tavern as he watches from across the room, but her kind refusal is obvious even without being able to hear her words. Later, she is sitting on his workbench in the barn, looking over the little carvings he's made and saying nothing.

“What do you want from me, my lady?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she says, but she watches him, and he feels her eyes all over his body and he can't concentrate.

“Are you sure?” he asks, and he hates the way he can't hold back the playful tone in his voice.

He has slowly moved from his place in front of the fire to stand in front of her. Sat on his table, she is still shorter, and she tilts her head just enough to look him in the eye.

One of his hands reaches out, rests on her cheek.

She moves quickly, her hands on the back of his neck, pulling his mouth to hers. He couldn't stop her if he wanted to; her fingers are in his hair, his beard, and her mouth is hot and demanding. There is a scar on her lip that he traces with his tongue, and one that follows the curve of her cheekbone that he traces with his thumb.

They end up in the hay loft, and he hates himself even more for it, but she doesn't complain and instead pulls at his shirt so she can tug at the hair on his chest.

She's quiet as she sits astride him and takes him, except for a shaky groan as she comes, and after, she gets dressed and lies next to him and breathes.

 

He can tell she is angry as she stands outside the jail cell in Val Royeaux. Her arms are crossed over her chest, and for once she is taller than him.

“You couldn't have told me this?” she asks.

“I didn't think I would live long enough for it to matter,” he says. It is only partly true. The rest is, _I didn't want you to know the real me_.

She understands anyway. “I have killed many people,” she says. “Some who deserved it, some who didn't. Should I submit myself to death for those crimes now, too?”

“It's not the same,” he says.

She watches him for a moment longer before turning and leaving. It is not entirely unexpected, the way his heart breaks as she leaves.

 

“Why do it?” he asks her. He is back in the barn at Skyhold, and she has made him a free man. “Why not just leave me?”

His back is to her, but he hears the loud, indignant breath she takes before crossing the barn and forcefully turning him around. She is looking up at him with both eyes, her neck craned.

“One,” she says, “because your death now would solve nothing. And two, because I love you, you _stupid old man_.” She kisses him, and it hurts a little bit, her teeth on his lips and her nails in his neck. He relishes it.

The feel of her rough cheeks on his thighs is better than he imagined.

 


End file.
